Flower for the Day Phlox 4-23-18

When I was in the first few grades of elementary school I used to walk home by Stuliks Pet store. Mr Stulik was European with a very thick accent and was kind of scary. He sold gold fish and turtles. But what I remember most was that he had a magical rock garden with limestone rocks with holes out of which came moss, and ferns, and small flowers. It had a peculiar funny smell, sort of like going down into a cave. My favorite rock garden flower then and now is phlox. 

Up close they are even more spectacular.

The Little House of Lost Play (Mar Vanwa Tyalieva)

by J R R Tolkien

 We knew that land once, You and I,  and once we wandered there  in the long days 

now long gone by,  a dark child and a fair.
  Was it on the paths of firelight thought  in winter cold and white,  or in the 

 blue-spun twilit hours  of little early tucked-up beds  in drowsy summer night, 

that you and I in Sleep went down  to meet each other there,  your dark hair on 

your white nightgown  and mine was tangled fair?    We wandered shyly hand in hand, 

small footprints in the golden sand,  and gathered pearls and shells in pails, 

while all about the nightengales  were singing in the trees.
  We dug for silver with our spades,  and caught the sparkle of the seas,  then 

ran ashore to greenlit glades,  and found the warm and winding lane  that now we 

cannot find again,  between tall whispering trees.
    The air was neither night nor day,  an ever-eve of gloaming light,  when first 

there glimmered into sight  the Little House of Play.
  New-built it was, yet very old,  white, and thatched with straws of gold,  and 

pierced with peeping lattices  that looked toward the sea;  and our own children's 

garden-plots  were there: our own forgetmenots,  red daisies, cress and mustard, 

and radishes for tea.
  There all the borders, trimmed with box,  were filled with favourite flowers, 

with phlox,  with lupins, pinks, and hollyhocks,  beneath a red may-tree;  and all 

the gardens full of folk  that their own little language spoke,  but not to You 

and Me.
    For some had silver watering-cans  and watered all their gowns,  or sprayed 

each other; some laid plans  to build their houses, little towns  and dwellings in 

the trees.
  And some were clambering on the roof;  some crooning lonely and aloof;  some 

dancing round the fairy-rings  all garlanded in daisy-strings,  while some upon 

their knees  before a little white-robed king  crowned with marigold would sing 

their rhymes of long ago.
  But side by side a little pair  with heads together, mingled hair,  went walking 

to and fro  still hand in hand; and what they said,  ere Waking far apart them led, 

that only we now know.